Ever feel like your business is getting away from you? You have so much to do, and there’s never enough time, it seems.
You can always find things to do. But are they important things? Things that will impact your business?
That discipline can be harder to achieve, especially when you’re caught up in the flurry of doing.
Your business is built on an idea. It was your idea that was the germ, the seed, of what you are doing right now. Without that, your business wouldn’t exist.
Ideas are the beginning of any of the successful aspects of your business. A product or service. A marketing campaign. A different way to do things that saves time and money.
Nurturing ideas is what helps keep you moving on a successful path. More ideas, more success. Taking time to think is an important way of nurturing ideas.
Really successful people don’t have less failure. They have more ideas.
So how can you make the best use of your thinking time, so you can keep coming up with ideas that help you have more impact and build that successful business you want?
Here are 5 great questions to ask yourself during your thinking time:
1. What do I want my life to be about?
Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. What you do in your work, no matter how impactful and important it is to you, is done in the greater context of your life.
It’s easy to get caught up in work, especially when you want to have a certain impact, and plan all kinds of things that actually interfere with the life you want to have. If your life is about relationships and connection, then creating a business where you work so many hours that you rarely spend time with friends and family isn’t the best choice for you.
2. What is the impact that I want to have?
What positive contribution do you want to make? How do you want to show up in the world? This is an everyday question, not just one for big events, a product launch or a major client meeting. How you show up every day adds up to the impact that you have on people and events.
3. How much freedom do I want to have? What does that mean for my business model?
One of the main reasons people start their own business is freedom. We want the flexibility to plan our lives in a way that allows us to focus on our priorities.
Your business model has a very real effect on the level of freedom you experience. If you have a bricks and mortar location, you’ll likely have less flexibility in your travel. If your business model requires you to have many clients at scheduled times, then you’ll have less flexibility to schedule other things during the week.
If you’re like me, and freedom of location is important so I can travel and stay in different places for weeks at a time, then a business model like coaching by phone and only periodic retreats and workshops where I am physically present is a good fit.
4. Who do I need to be to create my stretch income goal? My big vision goal?
When I do goal setting with clients, we break goals down into accessible, stretch, and big vision goals. That approach helps us identify a personal development path for you in order to reach stretch and big vision goals.
The person you are right now, with the income your business currently has, is not the same person who will achieve your big vision or even your stretch income goal. You’ll grow into that person. You’ll grow by making the decision to grow.
So what do you need to learn? Who do you need to work with, be mentored by? What skills do you need to develop in order to reach those goals?
5. What are the top 3 things I do that have the most impact in my business?
Define the top 3 things you do that have the most effect, that allow you to make the biggest contribution. Then begin to find ways to focus your own efforts around those high impact activities.
That can mean delegating other things. Find a reliable VA (virtual assistant) who can take on individual tasks at a reasonable cost. Ask the people who already work with you if they’d like to take that on. It can be a development opportunity for them!
It can also mean ditching those things that are just not that important. It’s so tempting to do a lot of little things, because it gives you the satisfaction of crossing them off your list. The harder thing is to have the discipline to do the things that are most important, most impactful for your business. And that can mean choosing to stop doing certain things.
Thinking is as important as doing. There, I said it. For an action-oriented person, that’s been a big realization for me!
Having a lot of ideas allows you a whole selection to choose from, experiment with, and learn from. Set aside time to think, so that you can create the seeds of more great things in your business.
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here for the Alchemy Assignment, so you can do more with your thinking time!